Posts tagged wikipedia

There's no denying Wikipedia's usefulness, but French computer science student Owen Cornec believes the website could stand to display entries "in a more engaging way." Thus, he created WikiGalaxy: a special Wikipedia browser that visualizes the website as a 3D galaxy. Each star represents an arti...

Trying to rate the world's literary giants is tricky at best. Do you go by the number of books sold? The long-term cultural impact? If you're Dartmouth College researcher Allen Riddell, you make computers decide. As part of an effort to determine which books would be most valuable in the public do...

Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich -- Then Vegas Made Them Pay ...

Most people show appreciation for Wikipedia by donating a bit of money to keep it running, but the folks in one Polish town have come up with something bigger: they've built a monument in its honor. It all began when Colegium Polonicum professor Krzysztof Wojciechowski decided he wanted a place wh...

We already know that the United States Congress (or the countless people it employs) can't seem to stop editing Wikipedia articles, but do they need to be such jerks about it? Case in point: Wiki tinkerers using an IP address connected to the US House of Representatives have been blocked from maki...

Android Wear will soon be buzzing our wrists numb with notifications, but what else can you do on such tiny screens? An app called Attopedia is testing those limits by letting you browse Wikipedia on your smartwatch. The logic is that mobile phone screens weren't great for browsing either until si...

Wikipedia recently revamped its app for Android, bringing the ability to edit articles and view random articles in the process. Starting today, those features are also available on iOS, with a new version of the official app available for download in the App Store. In addition to adding new functi...

Wikipedia already has an app, but get ready to meet its replacement. Available on Android starting today, the app's not just an aesthetic refresh; it adds the ability to edit entries directly from your mobile device. For those of us who use Wikipedia solely for browsing, that feature won't matter,...

Virtually everyone in the UK (and many an Engadget reader) is familiar with Stephen Fry's iconic voice, but will anyone remember it in, say, 50 years? He certainly hopes so, but just to be sure, Wikipedia has recorded it for posterity and pegged it to his bio page. The plan is to have a large numb...

Here's a Wikipedia stat you probably didn't know: around 80 percent of new contributions to the crowdsourced encyclopedia are abandoned before they're submitted. The organization thinks a lot of writers get cold feet because, since its creation, Wikipedia has deliberately prevented them from being...

The Wikimedia Foundation positions Wikipedia as a hub for unfettered knowledge, but it's now obligated to police that content in the wake of a newly published German ruling. Stuttgart's Higher Regional Court has determined that the organization is liable for Wikipedia articles. While Wikimedia won...

Wikipedia has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Texas publicity firm Wiki-PR over its alleged practice of "sockpuppeting," or posting articles for pay that make its clients look good. The open-source encyclopedia launched an investigation last month into the practice, which is a strong violation o...

Many see open source technology as an ideological tool -- a way to promote freedom in a world of closed, proprietary systems. For Canonical's Jono Bacon, Mozilla's Stormy Peters and Wikimedia's Tomasz Finc, it's more about improving humanity. Speaking at Expand, they argued that open code connects...

From Wikipedia to Firefox to Ubuntu and Android, open-source software has had a major impact in all of our lives over the past several years. We've brought representatives from Mozilla, Wikimedia and Canonical together to discuss how open-source software is driving the software industry.
November...

Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
The Decline of Wikipedia
by Tom Simonite,...

The good folks at the Wikimedia Foundation have been toying with the concept of mobile editing for some time now, attempting to tap into the 15-percent of its user base who read the open encyclopedia on mobile devices. It's a growing segment of the population that includes potential readers in dev...

Making simple edits to a post on Wikipedia hasn't traditionally been an impossible undertaking, but Wiki markup (the syntax used to add and adjust formatting) wasn't nearly as intuitive as it could have been. And editors dropped like flies as a result of confusing tags and a generally frustrating ...

The office is silent when our small film crew arrives at Wikimedia's San Francisco headquarters. There's none of the newsroom buzz one might associate with the operators of one of the world's largest sites. Hell, the day I started at AOL, there was a bulldog skateboarding through the halls. There ...

Wikimedia Commons, which acts as Wikipedia's media repository, has pushed its Android and iOS app out of the beta phase, giving photo collecting for the digital encyclopedia a workflow that isn't chained to a browser. By registering an account online and wielding the software, users can upload pho...

Wikipedia has long been pushing for access to its communal knowledge among those who can't afford the latest technology, going so far as to strike deals with carriers to deliver free mobile web viewing. It's set to expand that reach to those for whom any advanced cellphone is out of the question. ...